Dead air is – or at least ought to be – anathema for all broadcasters.

Radju Malta has found a neat way around this, in the evenings. Hey, stick on a CD – Queen, Elton John, or Julio Iglesias – and let it flow until it is time for the next scheduled programme.

But this was not what happened when the station of the nation was preparing for the live broadcast of the funeral ceremony of President Emeritus Guido de Marco.

There were several false starts, funereal music from a scratchy record, a programme promotion that went out by mistake – and for which there was no apology – and some seconds here and there of the aforementioned dead air. The television broadcast was marred by bad spelling (don’t these people use a spell-check?) in the caption.

PBS decided to go the Eurovision way, with different commentators – Charles Abela Mizzi for television and Ġorġ Peresso for radio; I would say that whoever could, tried to follow both since each of them has his own inimitable style .

Tonio Borg was invited on the news set to talk about Prof. De Marco. Viewers could easily have got the feeling that the cameraman had gone for a coffee break; all the interview was in long-shot (please, not a ‘close’ shot!), and close-ups which would have caught fleeting expressions as well as making the whole programme less stultified and stilted, were not done. The importance of close-ups is dinned into any child studying media education.

This sad event, as well as the fatal accidents of the two young men, saddened the nation.

I lost count of how many times the dreaded word ‘familjari’ was used wrongly instead of ‘familja’ to describe family members. It is apparently assumed that a familja consists of parents and offspring, whereas familjari includes any other kind of qarib (relative).

This is not so. The people who continuously make this mistake do not even realise that one word is a noun, and the other an adjective, unless it is used for the creature that is usually depicted with a witch. If anything, these people could look up the difference between familiar and familial.

If I am familiar with someone, there is an easy informality between us. But I am not (necessarily) related to the person by blood or by marriage. If I am familiar with something, I know it through and through. If I am familiar with a place I know my way around it.

Obituary notices sometimes compound the mistake by using the catch-all phrase ‘familja, qraba u ħbieb’ as if there were any perceivable difference between the first two words. Joe Dimech is one of the people who uses the word familjari as if there were no tomorrow – but what makes this worse is that now even Charles Abela Mizzi, the cynosure of local broadcasting, has now done it.

• The filming of Stejjer Qosra (One) is moving along nicely. Out of the 30 finalists, 10 stories are already in the can, and the editing for seven of them is finished, too.

They are scheduled for broadcast in January. The tentative plan is to air them on weekdays, which would eke them out for six weeks or thereabout. This arrangement remains subject to change. However, I like it since it would give people the opportunity to watch something different each day in the way of drama, without having to be bound by following a serial, episode by episode, failing which they would lose track of the storylines in an ongoing drama.

The drawback would be that some of the short films in the series would be missed by those who have other activities on specific days of the week; but I expect they could get someone to record the films for later viewing in private.

• More drama – and I am not only referring to the peculiar title – is Deċeduti. Episodes from this new series will go on air every Thursday on TVM.

The ploy devolves around two totally dissimilar groups who inhabit the same premises in, and, I quote from the blurb, “a sort of symbiotic relationship that is as ill fitting as it is practical”. From there, it can only get wackier – and it does.

Percival De Fonseca Torregiani Gomes is now penniless despite having been loaded – as the sole heir of the estate of his forbears. So he cheats, insurance-wise, and gets a block of flats constructed on the site of the erstwhile Palazzo, with himself as landlord.

This gives the scriptwriter the opportunity to combine the humdrum with the bizarre, and the trite with the ingenious. The lessees, of course, do not know what hit them when their lives are momentarily interrupted by Bruce Willis and Nicole Kidman, Maltese style.

The cast list is very, very interesting; Joe Tanti’s name caught my eye, and, of course, I had to get a quote from him: “It’s such a strong challenge and a great opportunity for me to be cast in an important and primary role. I’m here to learn from the very best, and act alongside the very best. No one in this business could ever ask for more.”

• A totally different kettle of fish, but drama nonetheless, is the edifying Il-Bniedem ta’ Kulħadd. This, the story of Monsignor Giuseppe De Piro, founder of the Missionary Society of St Paul, was produced to mark the first centenary of the society in June. This is a CAM Productions International work.

As from this Saturday and for four more Saturdays thereafter, this film will be aired on TVM following the 8 p.m. news bulletin. There will be five, 40-minute parts.

television@timesofmalta.com